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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 27, 2024

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There is going to be significantly less trust in our institutions six months from now than there was six months ago.

This seems inevitable, sadly. I don't expect fireworks, but I do expect a lot more quiet quitting. Cops stop enforcing the law, people stop joining the military, that sort of thing.

Instead of focusing on what's best for the country, interest groups will fight to get handouts. In fact we're already seeing that with the student loan bailouts.

Cops stop enforcing the law, people stop joining the military, that sort of thing.

So you just replace them with people who will.

I'm reminded of when Curtis Yarvin was on the Good Ol' Boyz podcast some time ago, where he first claimed that he "loves the 'chuds'," but then went on to argue that those same Red Tribe chuds are "worse than Morlocks" because the Eloi at least needed the Morlocks to maintain the machinery that supported their comfortable lifestyles, while "you can be entirely replaced with immigrants and automation," and just who do you think he was talking about warehousing in the Matrix in his "Virtual Option"?

And if you stop working, people eventually stop paying you, and then how do you keep your family fed and a roof over their heads?

Agree. Once you decide the ship really is going down, you stop showing up to fix the leaks and keeping the rudder straight .... and just start looting the supply stocks, picking out your life raft, and hope some ditzy redhead leaves you some room on the door.

My thoughts exactly. Defection may be about to get a lot more popular. I think it did after 2020, too.

Defection may be about to get a lot more popular.

Defection to where, exactly? And why would they want said "defector" anyway?

Defection against the common weal. One's fellow Americans.

Defection against the common weal. One's fellow Americans.

Oh, "defection" in the prisoner's dilemma sense, not "defection" in the "Soviet defecting to America" sense. That makes a little more sense.

But I don't see it mattering all that much, except seeing conditions for the average person decline while elites remain insulated from it all. As other people have noted, one can live a fully "first world" lifestyle in even pretty terrible "third world" countries, provided you're rich enough — the latter gets you cheaper servants, even. So plenty of people at the top will see nothing change even while life continues to get even worse for the rest of us.

Christ, I miss the Cold War